


Partners in Crime

by b00mgh



Category: Phineas and Ferb
Genre: And I Mean That Literally, Bastardization Arc, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Angst, OWCA is kinda sus, bruh this was a feverdream, if it is this is the origin story, is this a villain!perry au?, let perry say fuck, mentioned Veronica Doofenshmirtz, this is based on a dream i had
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:20:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26797978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b00mgh/pseuds/b00mgh
Summary: Doofenshmirtz hasn't done anything evil in months, and Perry can't stand being cooped up in the agency another second. He goes to check on his nemesis.Or: Perry and Doofenshmirtz escape the (probably) corrupt OWCA.
Relationships: Heinz Doofenshmirtz/Perry the Platypus
Comments: 9
Kudos: 70





	Partners in Crime

**Author's Note:**

> hfs so uhhh this is literally another one of those fics that i wrote verbatim based on a dream I had and i have no justification for why this particular ship is in there but i hope u enjoy <3

Recon this time. Easy. Doofenshmirtz has been too quiet for too long, and now Agent P is just… you know, checking in. Making sure he’s not up to any mischief, or planning anything for the tri-state area. Easy. 

And not at all a rogue mission that went uncleared by his supervisors in selfish interest in the nemesis that has been awfully quiet for three months, not making any device ending in “inator” with an inane purpose that is executed way too flippantly for someone that smart. 

No. This is a recon mission. A recon mission that has definitely been approved by everyone that it needed to be approved by, and not just the ditsy girl working the phone desk. 

But fuck if Perry shouldn’t have brought a thicker coat. It’s snowing in the tri-state area– first snow of the year– and if Perry hadn’t been so preoccupied with getting here fast and undetected he might have remembered to wear his parka instead of his windbreaker. He had been thinking that the windbreaker hugged his body better. Not about temperature. Because who knows what could happen on a definitely-supervisor-approved, strictly-recon mission? 

Sneaking into the Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc. building is easy because Perry probably knows his way around the place better than anyone working there. Maybe even better than Doofenshmirtz himself. Probably not better than his daughter, but Perry has never encountered her when crawling through the vents or anything, so his secret stash of snacks above the fourth-floor conference room is probably safe. In fact, Perry almost goes for his snack stash before continuing on to the top floor, but he reaches the edge of the tunnel, where one of the vents lets out into the center courtyard, and spots his nemesis. 

He’s standing, staring at a carefully maintained bed of what may have been a type of flower, before the frosts of winter set in. He’s letting the snow pile up on his bony shoulders, settle in the overgrown mess of hair on his head that hasn’t had it’s usual cut in much longer than Doofenshmirtz has ever let it grow out before. It doesn’t look great. It’s tangled and dull, like he hasn’t been washing it. Perry can’t see his face, but he can see the angle of his bad posture slumped even more than usual as he peers into the frosty, snow-littered dirt like he’s searching for signs of life in the frost-snapped stems that are frozen stiff and still wilting in the flower bed. 

Perry sometimes watches for a few minutes from the vents before popping out. When Perry is around, Doofenshmirtz is so active, so energetic, that watching him tinker on his machines or read the latest scientific journals or look dejectedly into flower beds is a little soothing. Even that maniac rests. But today, Perry’s recon mission has a short time limit because he didn’t get it cleared through the proper channels, and this could very well end in his arrest for whatever the OWCA deems fit if he isn’t back before they think to ask the ditsy girl at the phone desk where he could be. No time for daydreaming today.

He would honestly prefer to slip out into the courtyard unnoticed, but the vent is nailed shut, so he kicks it out and swings himself into the clearing, landing a little too hard on the paved walkways. There’s a statue in the middle of the courtyard, something abstract and a little ominous, and each of them runs in opposite directions trying to come face to face, twice. Maybe, to an outside observer, it would look like they were running away from each other.

But when they do see each other, Doofenshmirtz’s eyes light up. And that’s the worst part. It would be so much easier to go three months without seeing him if his eyes didn’t light up every time. 

But Perry forgot his hat in his dorm at the OWCA, and his nemesis has the object permanence of an 8-month old infant. “A platypus?” But he knows. There’s just no other reason a platypus– or, more accurately, a man in a convincing platypus mask– would be in a corporate office in one of the most urban sectors of the tri-state area. Doofenshmirtz grins widely, manically, way too brightly. “Perry the Platypus!”

“For fuck’s sake, Doof, if you still think I’m a platypus I’m not gonna come foil your plans anymore,” Perry mutters, and decides that, while he’s breaking the law, he might as well add ‘exposing yourself to the enemy’ to his list of violations, and he removes his mask.

“Perry the human– wait, you’re  _ not _ a platypus!?”

“I’m five feet and seven inches and I walk on two legs, how could you possibly think– holy shit, you  _ genuinely thought I was a platypus!? _ You have an IQ high enough to join fucking MENSA and you thought I was a  _ platypus!? _ ”

“Well, I mean, I’ve never actually seen a platypus–”

“It’s been six years!”

“You do that platypus noise very convincingly…”

“Heinz Doofenshmirtz, how the  _ fuck _ – You know what, fuck it, nevermind. Why haven’t you done any of your bullshit lately?”

“No, no, hang on. We’re settling this platypus thing–”

“Heinz, buddy, I ain’t got the time–”

“Just answer me this,  _ Perry the Human _ : if you’re not actually a platypus then why have you been wearing a platypus costume for the past six years?” 

“It’s literally just a mask. We could sit here and play the blame game all day but honestly the fact that you’re even alive when you didn’t know a grown-ass human being in a platypus mask was, in fact,  _ not _ a platypus for six years is fucking astounding.”

“Alright, alright, I concede that you are not a platypus. But I haven’t done anything evil in months! What nefarious plan are you here to foil if I haven’t made any nefarious plans?”

“That’s my issue, Doof. I’ve been cooped up in the agency for three months now ‘cause you’re not doing  _ anything _ big enough for them to let me out to chase you down! I mean, I’m sure the citizens appreciate not being turned into helium balloons or plagued with animated gummy worms or whatever the fuck, but I’m dying over here!”

“... Sorry, I’m still lost– you’re a  _ human _ now, and that really clears up some things about your body language in the past–”

“My  _ what _ ?”

“– and now you’re  _ also _ telling me to do bad things. I don’t get it, is this a practical joke? Are you kidding with me, Perry the Platypus?”

“Again, not a platypus, and I’m genuinely shocked that you’re still alive if you thought a grown-ass human man was a platypus.” Perry groans, pulling on the sleeves of his windbreaker. “Look, Heinz, I can’t stick around today, but if you don’t do something stupid soon–” he breaks off, laughing awkwardly. It’s all so much easier with the mask on. If he doesn’t talk, it’s so much easier. Fucking dammit, he should never have taken it off because now his voice is shaking.

Doofenshmirtz can see that, and he finally thinks to look around as suspiciously as Perry has been doing since the beginning of their conversation, checking for hostiles. “Why are you telling me this?”

Perry tries to backtrack, stammers “L-look, I’ve gotta get going–”

“But why do you have to go if you don’t want to go back?” Doofenshmirtz asks. He’s starting to put it together, and Perry can’t have that– can’t have him staring, staring, staring, can’t handle those eyes dimming or that evil grin twisting into a frown. Why did he have to take off his mask? Why the fuck did he even come here at all? For Heinz Doofenshmirtz to look at him while his genius fucking idiot brain pieces the little things into a picture and comprehension– not understanding because how could he understand?– blooms and excitement wilts in every muscle in his face? No, he didn’t come here for this. Perry’s got to get back soon. “What exactly is your job, Perry?” he asks, quietly, and then sirens shoot their eardrums. 

Perry’s been caught. 

Insubordination. Absence without leave. Leaking intel. Exposing yourself to the enemy. 

Fuck, what are they gonna do to him?

But Doofenshmirtz is already shoving him into the flower beds, between a half-wall containing another, raised bed of dead flowers and a holly bush, and he sinks into the shadow. It’s dusk, so it wouldn’t have been hard for a dark-skinned man to hide anyway, but the added cover of the holly bush makes him virtually invisible. 

When 30 agents storm the courtyard, after a minute spent inspecting the whole first floor, Heinz Doofenshmirtz puts his hands above his head and protests the unconstitutionality of the search, even if he’s starting to consider how the OWCA might not actually give a rat’s ass about the constitution. They press Doofenshmirtz, face first, to the floor and demand to know where Agent P is hiding. Doofenshmirtz nervously replies that he hasn’t seen Perry in months. The agents claim they have it on good advice that Agent P would be here. Doofenshmirtz tells them he really doesn’t know where Perry could be, but he’s not here, and you can’t detain me if I haven’t done anything wrong, so–

And a few of the agents laugh, and one of them says the hell he can’t, and they cuff him and lead him to a waiting van out front. Until the moment he is led, restrained like a criminal, through the doors to his own lobby, Doofenshmirtz’s eyes never leave Perry’s hiding, helpless, in the holly bush.  _ Don’t come out _ , they plead, _ don’t get caught _ . 

And it occurs to Perry that they had never cared if Perry was here. Whether they had found him or not, they were going to arrest Heinz Doofenshmirtz. And when they found Perry, it wouldn’t matter what they did to him because Heinz Doofenshmirtz will have already been shipped off to some blacksite and he will be declared dead by suicide to the public and Veronica won’t even have her father’s body to bury and–

And Perry has to make sure that doesn’t happen. He can’t let anything happen to Doofenshmirtz. 

It takes about two hours for all the agents to clear out of the building, and then Perry can move from his holly hiding spot. His knees creak angrily, and his eyes sting in the nighttime lights illuminating the courtyard. It’s still freezing cold, and it’s only getting worse in nothing but a windbreaker. No time to steal a jacket. He starts running.

He knows OWCA procedure, and he knows Monogram runs a tight ship. Even with a lower profile case like this (Doofenshmirtz may be a priority in Perry’s life, but in the face of a global organization like the OWCA, he’s chump change– since he’s not usually, you know,  _ doing _ things that would affect the balance of world powers), Monogram will make sure procedure is followed to the brass tacks. 

First, he’ll be brought in for questioning. (Perry knows that they might not ask him anything other than his name, date of birth, address, and next of kin, but every criminal goes through questioning).

After questioning, they’ll stick him a holding cell for no less than eight and no more than thirty-six hours. (This amount of time, the OWCA tells its agents, will make anyone uncomfortable enough to crack easily, but will not kill someone.)

After the holding cell, prisoners are given one meal. (Depending on who has that shift, the meal will be fast food or leftover rations from the bomb-scare stockpile the OWCA accumulated during the Cuban Missile Crisis.)

After fifteen minutes to eat, the prisoners are shipped off to a randomly-assigned blacksite. Perry doesn’t know what they do with them there. 

He’s got to break Doofenshmirtz out before that 15-minute snack break. 

He’s already lost two hours. He’s got something like six hours left. 

He took the bus here, but that line stops running at ten pm and it’s close to 10:30 now. There’s another bus that will get him close, but it takes a circuitous route. It’s almost faster to walk. If he runs, he’ll probably beat the bus. So he runs past the bus stop and down the street. He squeezes between urban alleyways and vaults over residential fences and slinks behind government vans. On the way, he picks up a burger from McDonalds. He’s not hungry. 

When he saunters back into the OWCA, burger in hand, there’s at least three supervisors who want to know where he’s been. It’s almost unheard of to lose an agent to insubordination, and everyone is begging to serve Agent P’s head on a platter to Monogram. 

“I was grabbing a burger– I’ve been practicing my aim all day since I threw it out training Thursday.” The lie is well-practiced down to the last syllable. Leaving the agency to get fast food is technically against the rules, but everyone does it– if they want to do anything to Agent P for it, they’d have to also get Agents A through Z. The shooting range has no sign-in system, and god knows these pencil-pushers don’t venture down there, so it’s anyone’s guess as to whether or not Agent P was really there. And Perry really did hurt his shoulder on Thursday. 

Nobody can really say anything to that. 

They leave him to go on his way with his Big Mac.

His first move is to throw away the Big Mac. 

Then he heads for the detention floors. On the elevator, he encounters Agent F, who wears a fox mask and calls herself Felicia. “How’s your shoulder?” she asks– which she should, since she’s the one who used Perry’s own arm to suplex him over her head. 

“Barely feel a thing,” he tells her. It’s mostly true. He wants this conversation to be over. Felicia’s always given Perry the creeps, and she’s got a solid six inches on him in height, and she’s staring at him like she has a knife at his throat right now. She doesn’t, yet. Perry would appreciate keeping it that way. 

Unfortunately, that’s not meant to be. 

“Where are you headed?” Felicia asks. 

“Bed,” Perry lies, “I’m beat.”

“Really? Then why’d you press the button for the detention level? That’s three floors above the dorms.”

“Did I? Fuck, I guess sometime’s the dorms  _ feel _ like detention cells.” He moves to press the button that will ask the elevator to continue three floors lower to the dorms. He can always go back up the stairs once he’s down there–

And then Felicia has him pressed flat to the wall, her forearm pressed into his neck and her eyes glaring into his like she can  _ see  _ the lie. “Wanna tell me the  _ truth _ , Agent P?” she hisses. “Nobody has seen you anywhere today, and Dale and Katherine told me they went on a little trip today to Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc. to pick up some garbage. Now, there’s no coincidences at  _ all _ in that story, are there,  _ Perry _ ?” 

“I seriously think you're mistaken–”

“Cut the crap,” Felicia snaps, and in that half-second pause where she breathes in and her forearm adjusts, Perry snaps a leg out and trips her. She doesn’t fall, but she stumbles, and any space is better than none in an elevator with less than twelve square feet of breathing room. Before Felicia can recover and remember how to use her size to her advantage, Perry uses his speed to kick her in the knee. He’s trying to break it, so she can’t chase him when he runs about ten seconds from now, but she’s got more muscle than anyone in the OWCA, Perry included, and in this case it holds up against Perry’s kick. Shit. She grabs the foot he kicks with and yanks him forward like a ragdoll, and when she’s got him close, she uses the back of his head to slam the front of his head into the metal walls. He doesn’t get up fast enough and she bares her teeth in a snarl and twists his arm behind him to hold him to the ground on his stomach. “I’m gonna enjoy watching them light you up with shotgun shells,” she says darkly. 

“Too fuckin’ bad,” Perry growls, and flips himself over with all the strength that his core and free arm can push out so he’s got Felicia pinned on her back. He punches her once in the temple– the way he was trained– to rattle her brain around enough to knock her out. She won’t stay out though, so Perry removes his belt and ties her feet and removes his tie to restrain her hands behind her and opens the elevator doors to the detention level. 

There’s four cells labeled “occupied.” Two house illegal arms dealers. One is holding a political scientist who may or may not have been planning to stage a coup on the Australian government. The most recently occupied cell has one Heinz Doofenshmirtz. 

Felicia is signed in as the guard on shift for the detention cells. 

She knew he’d be coming and left her post to subdue him before he got here. 

It would have been a smart move if it had worked. 

Unlocking the cells, Perry shouldn’t be as surprised that he is that Doofenshmirtz’s eyes still light up when they see him. “Perry the Human!”

“If you’re still on about the platypus thing, I will lock you in that cell again.”

“Yeesh, alright. Let’s get out of here.”

“Yeah,” Perry shoos him towards a vent that he knows winds up and around the building before letting out at the ground floor, “you should get out of here.”

“Wait, wait, no. What about you?” Doofenshmirtz swats Perry’s hands down and throws out his arms. “You’re just going to, what, hope they don’t know you let me out?”

“I’m a good liar.”

“They’ll still know it was you, Perry.” Bright eyes come closer and Heinz Doofenshmirtz is looking at Perry– not Perry the Platypus or Perry the Human, just Perry– so gently. 

“What do you want me to do? Turn myself in?” Perry spits, voice leaping up in pitch and fraying at the edges, “Do you know what they do to agents who don’t follow orders, Heinz!?”

And Heinz meets Perry’s panicked line of sight for just a moment. He knows. Perry wants to be sick. “I want you to come with me.”

“ _ What!? _ ” 

“Come with me! What can a secret organization like this do to a couple of guys like us, huh?”

Perry cackles, a little hysteric and a little dry. “A lot. They could do a  _ lot _ .”

“A-ha! But, see! It’s a matter of whether or not we let them, Perry!” Doofenshmirtz grins his evil little grin and holds out his hand. Perry doesn’t take it, at first. “Just me and you– and Veronica when her mother lets her visit– against the whole system. What do you say, Perry? Partners?”

His eyes are still so impossibly, lovingly bright. Perry smiles, and it feels a little unhinged. 

“Alright, Heinz,” and he takes his hand, “Partners.”

**Author's Note:**

> love u all, thank u for reading!! 
> 
> if u wanna stop by my tumblr to see what I'm up to next im at tumblr.com/blog/bmgh-writing  
> if u wanna stop by my tiktok to see what I'm up to next im @cakelesbian  
> (these links also have links to support me monetarily bc i am broke in college and lost my job bc Rona <3)
> 
> As always, Scream at me in the comments, nothing brings me more joy!


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